Friday, February 27, 2009

This was week four of The Artist's Way for myself and the cluster. Week Four is the week we all dread - reading deprivation week. At the beginning of the week I made a list of all the things that I could and couldn't do, considering how things are going with the creative projects that I am working on and the writing committments I now have to meet with my Write Anything and Type A Mom columns.

I decided that I could go onto the internet to research the two columns that were due this week ... but not surfing, no Facebook (other than to go on the MILC event page to get the stats for the Nurse-In over the weekend), no personal emailing and no recreational reading. Sad to say - I've broken all the boundaries that I put in place. This is the week that I could not even have imagined, in my wildest fantasies.

Across the week I have been chasing a story about Facebook and the Virtual Nurse-In that was a dismal failure last weekend. When I started to dig I discovered lots of little things that didn't seem to add up. I had a moment as I was hanging the washing out Tuesday afternoon where I decided that I either chase the story and find out the truth, I pretened that it didn't exist and find a 'safe' topic to write my Type A Mom article on.

Never one to shy away from a challenge and believing that I had a fantastic article staring me straight in the eye - waving at me ... I asked the Universe for forgiveness and blessing as I chased down the story. This included getting my head around jargon and understanding the ins and outs of denial of service attacks, conducting a skype interview at 4:30am yesterday morning, wading through a daze of sleep deprivation to make the words and argument fit together. That's on top of juggling contacts in three different time zones to myself make motherhood look easy! As an aside - Paul you rock! Just in case I haven't mentioned that publicly for a bit.

Then today I was faced with a decision. I contacted the Syndey Morning Herald who have been running a series of articles on Facebook taking advertising money from known fraudulent get-rich-quick-schemes. Asher Moses was interested in my story. But I wasn't prepared to just'give' my story away - as Dave reminded me, I'd done all the leg work, got up in the dead of night to speak to Canda, I'd written the article ... so I tried to sell it. The Editor said there was no freelance budget.

When it was a no go, I decided that if I was putting the story out and doing it for nix, I'd patronage Type A Mom, the site that's had faith in me and my editor Alyssa and site owner Kelby. It also means that I get to say what I want to say without having to dumb down or change my language, my thoughts or conclusions.

I'll provide Asher Moses with the link. He intends to follow up the story next week and he's promised to provide a link on his article citing my column as the original source. We'll see if he comes good on that promise ... and what Facebook's comment will be!

You know what - I feel like my head is going to explode. When I wrote on Wednesday evening in my new moon wishes:

I want easily trust in my ability to know what is right and wrong for me

I honestly had not idea that this is the sort of scenario it would be applied to. I may look back and regret the decision that I made - but I decided to go where my loyalties lie rather than getting blinded by the possiblity of having my story, my name on the Fairfax newsfeed!

Sometime in the next few hours the story will go live ... at a time when I will be walking along the beach on the Sunshine Coast two hours away from my computer, an internet connection and any furore that kicks up from it. Possibly another bad move. If I get desperate there's always an internet cafe I suppose or friends with access who can call me on my mobile.

So that's my week! I've been told I've taken on a Herculean task and I'm to be commended for raising my voice - but it doesn't at this point really seem that big. Even if we are talking FACEBOOK! Just exhausting. If you're a friend on Facebook and I disappear - you know Facebook isn't impressed with what I've had to say and had my account deleted all with all those breastfeeding Mums with so called 'obscene' photos.

I may suck big time at reading deprivation but I hope that it wasn't for nothing. I will be doing my reading dep this week coming. My head space and my soul space need a rest after this week. And I need to plug back into my family - who've been amazingly supportive of me and enjoyed all the takeaways they've had for a change.

UPDATE: You can find the link to the story here if you're interested to see what consumed my week!